Once Upon a Dream
by Neftzer
Summary: Neal's working hard to find his place in the Enchanted Forest among his three rescuers and the others left behind in the now-Cursed Lands. Will Magic, which always finds him, let him alone this time? Will he have the courage to face it? Even if it means being outed for who he is? Builds on my "Once Upon a Homecoming" but more than okay to read alone. Some Emma flashbacks.
1. Chapter 1

**Once Upon a Dream**

Admittedly, the stranger known as Sir Neal-Neal Swan if you asked for more information about him-had not, actually, had any experience dealing with princesses. Emma, of course, didn't count. No matter that her blood, or her Divine Right or whatever or however nobles were chosen in the Enchanted Forest might beg to differ with her on her aristocratic status. "Born a princess," sure. But thirty minutes of palace life had not begat a woman whom anyone could accuse of acting like any of the "Princess"-types that always seemed to have the name of some ethnic group attached to the front of them in the parlance of American slang. She bore none of their entitlement, none of their seeming penchant for clothes hoarding and extreme mani-pedis.

As for the genus: _Princess, Fairy Tale_? Emma resembled this even less. She was far more likely to shoo a stray bird away from her food than to offer it her finger for a perch. More likely to tell a dirty joke than whistle a happy tune. And singing? Better for all if she didn't try to sing.

So, no real experience with princesses. But in Princess Aurora, he was getting an education. And how. Or perhaps, he was merely getting an education in all things Aurora. Rose, as she had asked him to call her. There was about her a sweetness that tracked often as innocence, but he could not believe anyone who had lived such periods of sorrow and loss truly stayed innocent in the face of life's cruelty.

She was simple-hearted, he had come to understand, not simple-minded.

The other two did not give her nearly enough credit. Oh, he could see that Philip loved her, and that Mulan on many levels respected aspects of her, but neither of them granted Aurora much faith where her competence was concerned. In reaction to their unthinking dismissals of her skills, he had taken it upon himself to teach her as much and as quickly as he could everything he knew about the basis of survival in the wilds of this place that was once a seaside corner of the Enchanted Forest. And thing was, she already knew more about cottage life than the other two combined. She had, as she had earlier confessed, been raised by her aunties in the woods, her royal parents trying to protect her from Maleficent and her minions' searching eyes.

By all accounts it had been a far nicer cottage than the one into which _he_ was born and raised. It would appear that with a proper hearth and ready ingredients she would have made a fine cook. She could sew in a practical way, and had a sharp mind for recalling useful plants for everyday life. And, twice as valuable, she was rarely given to complaints.

For over a month they two had been at coordinating a census of sorts of people left in the Cursed Lands, listing where they had originated from, what their occupation had been, what if any family they had been separated from when the Curse fell. It had been Aurora who had known how to mix the needed ink for the task, what to wash the paper of Mulan's scroll with to remove the ink previously on it detailing long-ago troop movements from her days with the army.

The task of seeking out the current, mostly shy and highly suspicious (if not downright terrified) remaining population had fallen to Philip and Mulan, and though Neal would have thought Aurora a calming influence to take along—far less frightening than either the knight or the taciturn woman warrior—he would also have been sorry to lose her companionship during the census-taking.

So their days were spent together at an agreed-upon location, where Philip and Mulan sent those they could find to join with the others assembled until the number-taking was ruled as complete as could possibly be hoped for, and the gathered peasants could be organized and put to necessary tasks; something like an economy created, and the coming Winter prepared for.

Aurora did seem to take to the growing number of people at their tiny outpost. She seemed to find safety among them, and certainly society, which she had been away from for so very long.

He was less certain of feeling better when amongst their number. There was an uneasiness he could never fully shake, and the persistent fear that though it was several centuries later he might yet be recognized as Baelfire, the Dark One's son. Constantly being introduced as Emma's husband, Snow White and Prince Charming's son-in-law Neal Swan, did little to quiet his addled nerves.

And there was the additional feeling of late that he was having unsettling…well, he was not sure how to name them. Certainly he was not going to tell anyone else about them. But _experiences_ where he kept encountering things that reminded him of his mother. Her favorite flower seeming to suddenly bloom underneath his foot when he was walking what had been a clear, unhindered path only moments before. A person presenting for the census-taking who just happened to share the unusual name of his mother's mother.

He woke one morning with a weird poking in his back and pulled aside his pallet from the forest floor to find a Griffin Silver, pretty much the exact likeness of one his mother had lent him long ago as a child (that currency no longer having been valuable in the Frontlands) to sleep upon for luck. She had told him that if he slept with it under his mattress he'd catch enough luck the next four days in a row.

And, strangest of all, moments when her long-forgotten scent seemed to be on the breeze, whichever way he turned.

He did not like to be reminded of his mother. The memories that he had of her were so at odds with what she had become…what she had done in leaving him, abandoning their family. Hers was a story he would rather not try, as an adult, to re-read. It still made a sad child of him; frightened, mourning. Confused at her rejection. Unable to understand her desertion and loss.

He had not been near her in hundreds of years. Lifetimes. And yet, a mother was a mother. And no child easily forgets that, no matter what the Lost Ones of NeverLand might argue to the contrary.

**...TBC...**


	2. Chapter 2

"Will you take a sword?" Mulan had appeared early and unexpectedly, dawn not yet fully having broken.

_He_ could barely register her request, his brain still rattling through the list of things he had to reconcile every morning he awoke to find himself back in the Enchanted Forest.

"Sword?" he asked, confused. Weaponry was in short supply since the Curse, no smiths or armorers with workshops set up to make new (yet another one of the problems they hoped to allay with their census and assignment of trades), and Mulan and Philip generally kept what arms they had under close watch. And certainly Mulan was not a person who seemed particularly inclined toward sharing (or playing well with others).

Much less sharing with a man she did not fully trust.

"They have found something they say I must travel and go to see," Aurora piped up semi-chipperly, but he could read new lines of strain about the corner of her eyes, which of a morning ought to be refreshed, not already anxious. "I want you to come, too," she encouraged him. "The census can wait."

"It is no more than a day's ride and a little more," Mulan added, informatively. "But through wild forest and the open danger of several steppes."

_Always with a cheery word_, he thought sardonically, _our Mulan_.

"Why can't you just tell Rose what you've found?" he asked, unconvinced of a need for an immediate decamp. "Forget the surprise, save her the trip?"

Mulan continued packing her saddlebag with new provisions, only the smallest blip of a pause at his lack of enthusiasm. "We don't know _what_ we've found. But Philip believes it is located near to where her aunties' cottage would once have stood within the Forest. It has been overtaken, though, by thorns and briars—not unlike that evil plant which once ensconced Aurora whilst she slept."

"An _evil_ plant?" he asked, overly skeptical even in his sleepyheaded state. "How can that be? Since the Curse there _is_ no more Magic here."

"No more Magic here?" Aurora echoed, her perplexed face showing she had not realized he believed so.

"What was once the Enchanted Forest is _thick_ with Magic," Mulan explained, shaking her head at his incorrect conclusion. "But there are few—if any—left with the ability to connect with it, much less bend it to their will."

Rose sighed. "It is but one more of the thousand and one skills no one left seems to know how to practice," she agreed. "Did you not notice none of the people we've tallied have listed themselves as having a magical vocation?" Her brow furrowed at his lack of perception. "Not so much as a single 'wise woman' among them."

Perhaps he had felt too relived at such lack for him to give it his full attention.

"Okay," he agreed, moving on. "So how do you know it's not some sort of booby trap left behind when the Curse fell?"

"I don't," Mulan said, without the sound of admitting any personal shortcoming in her voice. She answered his questions calmly and reasonably, like a patient teacher lecturing to an inquisitive student. As usual, her demeanor was cool to a fault. "Will you take a sword?" she asked again.

"And _why's_ Aurora gotta go?" he asked, with a wince for the coming sunrise.

"Because we have always triumphed when the three of us have faced any challenge together," Mulan answered him, evenly matter-of-fact. Her faith in this idea was so total she could have aced a lie detector.

"Alright," he agreed to this notion, though warily. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, which wanted proper washing in a hot, driving shower with plenty of shampoo. "I prefer a short sword," he admitted to the lady warrior, without saying something close to a pirate's cutlass seemed to fit best in his hand.

…**TBC…**


	3. Chapter 3

They arrived at the location shortly after dusk, in the final quarter mile following only what he and Aurora had assumed was the light of Philip's campfire. But shortly it had become obvious a man as practical as Philip would know better than to set a fire as large as would have been needed to generate so much and so persistent a light.

And as they drew closer, Mulan with Aurora set behind her, he alone on a horse Mulan had managed to procure for the journey, the light began to take on a decidedly blue glow, and with it a sort of hum. And then it became apparent that the blue glow was coming from within the forest, where they would have discovered (even had they not been already told) a wild thatch of unusually large and sharp brambles and briars tangled among the old growth trees. Within it was a steady glow, small bursts of more intense blue popping among it here and there, as though a new breed of firefly were attracted to it, rising from the forest floor and blinking its tail's light in brief, telegraphic bursts of sapphire against the lighter, steadier blue.

Had he not had an inveterate dread and hatred of Magic, he would have had no other choice but to declare it beautiful, heartbreakingly so. He looked to the side to see the effect such a vision had on Aurora.

He found himself often doing this since their acquaintance began; checking to see how the world struck her. Perhaps it was that she recalled Henry to him, her having met his lately-discovered son in a nightmare world of fire, yet coming away from the experience with what she felt was a fierce connection to the boy, and certainly (Neal could confirm) a strong grasp of Henry's character.

So in this she became to him both Rose, and also a blessed touchstone to Henry, far away and unreachable back in Storybrooke with Emma. And he found he enjoyed (and at times fretted) at seeing the world they now shared through her eyes—as he had also done for that brief time seeing New York City, and The World Without Magic, through Henry's. Their relationship settling somewhere between parent, older sibling, and protector. Only one of which Aurora could lay claim, in Philip as her physical protector—when he was able to be around. But there were other ways in which Rose needed protecting (and ways which neither Mulan nor Philip saw), among which were the practical idea that teaching her to protect and stand-up for her self—self-sufficiency—would prove the greatest protection of all.

At times lately he had begun to wonder if that were not the most parental impulse of all.

Presently Aurora had already been in an unusual mood, not even bothering to comment with curiosity on the obvious-to-all fact that he had not much experience riding horseback (he could not share with her that peasants such as he had been—still was?—walked. Knights and gentlemen rode, and until so very recently he had never been taken for either.) But she had been pulled out of her preoccupation with what they were shortly arriving to face by the light of (what he assumed was) the thing itself, glowing and maybe even fluctuating in intensity to its own low, throbbing rhythm.

"Somebody call Mulder and Scully," he quipped to himself, knowing the allusion would be lost on the others.

"Philip has been trying to cut a path through it," Mulan shared, once they had successfully located Philip's exceedingly modest campsite.

"Can he manage alone?" Neal asked, concerned that the Prince had chosen to confront such a huge and seemingly perilous task single-handedly.

"His sword still retains some of the power it was given to defeat Maleficent," Aurora offered. "It would be no easy task, but no blade would likely make a mark on it otherwise."

_What?_ "Philip has Magic in his sword?" he asked, feeling progressively more like he was behind-the-times.

"And thank the Powers for that," the man himself appeared, exiting the woods, his sword having appropriated a muted tint of the blue.

"Philip!" Aurora exclaimed, and rushed to him, where he accepted her hug and then kept his left arm about her waist (not sheathing his sword) as he addressed the rest of them. "I have cut a path, but we have not long before it overgrows itself again."

Seeing the way Rose ran to him, the seemingly intuitive embrace that followed, Neal caught himself wondering again about princesses. She avoided the inherent danger of his sword so easily, found her way to Philip's side, her lips to his, their faces and torsos fitting together so perfectly—as though they had originally been cut, pieces from the same cloth. Was this something in which a princess was trained? Was it instead in-born? Or was it merely human (fairytale or magicless realm), this unclumsy meeting of arms and lips? A way, perhaps, to divine love, to recognize predestined pairings? Surely his parents had never shared such a moment. Had _he_ ever done so, he wondered, shared such a moment of perfect fluidity with Emma? With any woman?

"I don't get it, Mulan." He spoke both to question the trio's plan and to clear his head of further princess or Emma thoughts. "Why tweak the nose of something Magical when you yourself admitted you know of no one who can control it, much less defend themselves against it?" He turned to Rose's knight. "Philip: tell me again why you're so intent on disturbing whatever's inside there?"

"I think Aurora herself may tell you once we travel the path," Philip answered cryptically, sharing a look of significance with Rose, though one she herself clearly did not understand the significance of.

_I don't like this_, Neal thought, but only to himself. Perhaps better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Though personally, life had taught him that running in the opposite direction of all devils, really, did wonders for the constitution. He'd the unnaturally long life to prove it.

Philip went first, occasionally needing to hack at a regenerating tendril here or there, his sword-free arm still around Aurora. Neal found himself directly behind them, borrowed short sword drawn, but pointlessly so, he realized. Philip had only to raise _his_ sword and the new growth would withdraw. Mulan brought up the rear, her back to them, her mind far more concerned with what of the forest might pursue them in here, than with what lie ahead at the terminus of Philip's chosen path.

_Duly noted, Ninja Mei-mei_, he thought. Mulan had no shortage of faith, or focus when she felt she could trust another. She expected Philip to accomplish his task, and seemed to feel no impulse to double-check on his progress. Her searching gaze and full concentration lay in guarding her end of their party. _Wonder if she worries about me_, he mused, _or is the defending the middle of our little cluster nothing to stress about?_ Perhaps that was why it was given to him, he pondered, the man she claimed to trust only insofar as to honor Aurora's belief by proxy.

As they walked further in, the blue light increased in intensity, but only in relation to the deeper darkness within which the briars enclosed them. Just when Neal thought the solemnity of the moment, the possibly impending danger ahead had rendered them all mute, Aurora spoke.

"Was there a glowing light within the thorns that…encased me?" she asked, her voice unsteady, sounding even younger and more untried than usual. Clearly, speaking so specifically of her Sleeping Curse was not easy for her.

"No," Philip replied, his tone willing relief toward Rose. "Only thorns; thick and cruel." He squeezed reassuringly at her waist. "And once vanquished, in the center, only you."

Neal did not have to be able to see to know that Philip would be smiling in recounting that fact. He smiled himself, thinking of it, rooting for Philip and Aurora's happiness. They ought to have some, after the trials they had been through, and yet, through it all, still wanting to be with one another.

And here came thoughts of Emma, never far away anymore, and always pushing through into the forefront of his mind.

A large truck stop outside a larger city in the PacNor. Hopping with customers and half the wait staff on some sort of extended smoke break—probably in the back watching the weather reports. They had come inside from the fast, on-coming blizzard, no chains for the Bug, bad idea trying to ride it out in a parked car. Enough money to order a cup of coffee for each of them—bottomless refills, and sit in the free heat and wait it out.

But they'd have to take a vacation from petty theft if they were planning to spend the storm's duration here. Nowhere to hide or flee if you were caught trying to duck out on a check from the restaurant or shoplift from the attached store. Best case, he thought once the snow started coming they might find they needed some help shoveling the sidewalks, might spot someone a little cash under the table for such work. Or offer to clean off the cars of anyone stopping to eat.

Of course, the snow was not yet here to shovel. So no money, no other plans.

"Well, it doesn't do much for the stomach," Emma pointlessly said aloud, referencing what little good thin coffee—even with real cream added—did for hunger. Her flat, barely-there stomach growled, a beast off its chain.

"Damn, Girl," he replied in a hushed tone from across the booth's table. "Put that thing back in its cage before they call the cops on it disturbing the peace!" He sniggered.

For a moment she grinned, then the silly expression fell from her face. "Why do you do that?" she asked, now serious.

"Do what?" as though practiced at evading such leading questions, his eyes skittered away from her gaze.

"Act like you're not hungry when I _know_ you have to be twice as bad off as I am—you gave me most of your half of the soup yesterday."

"Nah," he protested, shrugging it off, slouching with casual disinterest. "Been hungry my whole life, more or less. Cold, too," he was trying to charm her away from the subject, which was getting more personal than he cared for. "Just another day at the office."

But she went on, putting her hand out toward him on the table.

He did not take it, but he looked at it.

"And your nightmares. We both know they happen. _I_ know you pretend to go back to sleep when you wake up from them. You don't go back to sleep—not for hours. But you won't say what they're about." Her fingertips lifted and brush at the top of the table, looking for something to make a connection with. "You call me out for acting ten feet tall and bulletproof—but what was does that make you? Jason Bourne? The strong silent-type? I mean, I know you're not a spy. Even if you're name's so _not_ Neal Cassady."

"I can't—" he stalled. "I can't talk about it. They're from when—from when I was abandoned, okay?" Here he grabbed at her hand, suddenly and clumsily. He stared as his thumb inspected the smoothness of her bent knuckles.

"And still—so many nights—" she asked.

"Yeah," he agreed, as much to cut her off from going any further as anything else.

He caught her eye, or perhaps she caught his, and he could tell she understood what it had taken for him to share even that much, even that vaguely.

"Yeah," without his verbally asking, she understood him, and agreed to blow off the seriousness of the moment. "Maybe you need to look into this bulletproof thing I got workin' for me."

"What, you givin' lessons?" he asked, relieved for the reprieve she had generously allowed him from the topic.

A moment later, the foursome seated behind them had left in the wake of increasingly dire reports about the weather shortly to arrive. In their haste they had paid their check but abandoned their meals half-eaten at most. Emma and he stood and quickly consolidated the entirety of the four place settings of leftovers onto one plate, each grabbed clean, napkin-wrapped silverware from a tub under the wait stand, carried their haul back to their own booth, and tucked into their sketchily-acquired lunch: red-eye steak, eggs cooked several ways, breakfast meats, gravy, biscuits, a corn beef hash and two-thirds of a bowl of Texas-style chili.

He watched as she poured syrup over the steak, and hooked a doughnut missing one bite over the lip of her coffee cup.

"Do I know how to treat a girl, or what?" he had asked, too happy to bother telling her she had a fleck of red bell pepper in her teeth when she smiled back in reply.

Thinking on this he asked himself: Ought not he and Emma have some happiness, too? And not only borrowed, half-leftover happiness? Had they not suffered enough to deserve it? The trials they had each endured, had those not gone some distance to pay toward a future happy ending? Or was, simply, their happy ending not to be granted with them together? Perhaps, even now, not knowing it he was _living_ his happy ending: knowing that in the clutch he had done all he could for his child—made certain Henry had his mother, a parent and grandparents to love him and care for him.

Being with Henry would surely stand as a happy ending for Emma—this he did not doubt. Knowing Henry was not alone—for _him_ this should be enough. Should be Neal, _the father's_, happy ending: doing the right thing, making the right choice, choosing someone else over himself.

But as much as he felt this very likely to be true, he also knew that Emma, and her declaration before he dropped into the bean portal, still held many questions for him. That he loved her he did not doubt. Never had doubted. In what way he loved her he was yet uncertain—and unlikely to puzzle out when separated from her. Was it more than that they were simply family? For eleven years, after all, he had worked to convince himself he could neither have her nor be with her. He had flinched anytime (though such times had been rare) he had heard the city of Tallahassee mentioned. Was what still lived within him a deeply romantic love?

After all, was sharing a car for a primary residence and stealing your daily requirements in a petty-crimes spree across the West Coast an act of romance? Certainly he did not think so. David, David could probably pull off romance, smoothly and safely embrace Snow while brandishing a sword, swashbuckling all day long. Could give rousing and deeply-felt speeches to make a woman weak in the knees. Henry's book seemed to indicate as much, though in Storybrooke he was just another guy, of course—_but still_…

Emma was his daughter. Perhaps she deserved that sort of love, extraordinary and poetic. Yet the understanding between the two of them had been reasoned and matter-of-fact, their connection intense, but no more exotic than the kitchen sink. (Which might seem dull to some, unless you'd known a life of having no kitchen sink—or no money to pay for water _coming_ to your kitchen sink.) Nothing of grand illusions and pipe dreams, castles among the clouds. (Tallahassee on a motel room map, a matchbox of their own, a fence of real chain link, and so forth—but not castles.) Nothing of knights on white horses and candlelit dinners on a terrace. More like thieves in yellow VWs, and shoplifted ramen noodles. Nope, very little of the romantic to be had there. Which was not to say lacking in passion. No, the upholstery in the Bug could certainly attest to that.

But though Emma had, it seemed, been an old soul at birth, she was young, then. Fancy dinners and hothouse roses had not been of interest to her. Finding someone with whom she could settle, with whom she could belong—the most visceral, basic need just a half-step above hunger and shelter—had been both their deepest wishes. For all that they were often closed-off to the world (and in moments, from each other) it was in truth sharing that their hearts most craved.

Could she love a man in a forever Snow White/Prince Charming sort of way who had left her behind to imprisonment and (unbeknownst to him) childbirth? Did that sort of forever love (and forgiveness) between two people exist outside the Enchanted Forest (which now, technically, no longer existed)?

He loved Emma. Was desperate to see her again. But whatever they had—whatever they might one day figure out that they had—was not (as far as he could see) what Philip and Aurora had. It was a plant all its own, grown from an Enchanted Forest seed and onto it grafted lives and experiences in the World Without Magic. If True Love, then a different breed of it.

And that wasn't even taking into consideration the flogging he was likely to receive if Emma were to find him and discover the way in which their story had been misconstrued by Aurora and Co. until the trio was convinced—and told anyone that would stop and listen-that he was Neal Swan, Emma's husband

Having fallen deeply into this line of thought and reflection, he did not see in time. A branch of regrowth reached out toward him and he tripped, falling dangerously toward it, his face landing within fractions of an inch from a thorn thicker and longer than his own thumb.

In a flash, Philip brought his sword around, the queer bluish glow it had taken on causing the branch to startle and withdraw back into the density of the bush and to trouble them no longer.

But not quickly enough that Neal did not find himself uncomfortably recalling something from the past, finding it was not only ingestion of the fairy's foot plant that could jog the mind so. The memory passed as quickly as it presented to him, but still he caught himself absently rubbing the palm he had injured so long ago on a long-dead thorn bush. How tenderly he recalled his mother bandaging it, gently rubbing on an ointment she had bartered half their meager supper to buy, in order to keep him safe from the thorn's well-known paralyzing poison. How worried she had been that he would lose the use of his fingers!

It was such an unusual memory, such a moment of pure mothering he actually gasped aloud with the force of it, and the surprising truth of it. It was so inconsistent with what had followed in their relationship.

In the present: "You're fine," Mulan assured him, though somewhat impatiently, thinking his momentary absentmindedness rooted in the shock of his present close-call, lending him an arm to help him raise up.

"Yeah. Fine. Gettin' better every minute we spend in here," he quipped sarcastically to her, consenting to her assistance in getting up off the ground.

Mulan was just about the only person he had met here with any appreciation for (or detector of) sarcasm. Probably because genuine emoting seemed so beyond her tightly-wound, narrow range, and emotion _had_ to come out somewhere. Even if only in asides the entirely-sincere Enchanted Forest population pretty much wholly missed out on.

"Neal," Philip called to him from up ahead, where they had reached the end of his Magically-hacked path, the briars and thorn bushes opening upon a small clearing, with a low overhead clearance. The Prince thrust the hilt of his sword toward Neal, indicating that he should take it to use in continuing to threaten the magical vines.

Neal's first instinct was to throw up his arm, and present his own weapon and try to protect himself from the still-enchanted blade, but he forcibly swallowed that instinct back, thinking of the necessity of using Philip's sword as a tool in the face of the overwhelming brambles. He took it (now doubly armed, one in each hand, broadsword and short) and took in what it was they had been brought to see. From under the bushes the bed of a stream ran, the water within it still to the point that it resembled its solid state of ice, but without frost or chill. It was, simply, stopped in place. Small ripples coursed through it (as they would have had it been running), standing up still like dollops in a meringue. The stream was, for lack of a better term, petrified in place.

The stream ran toward what was the outline of a crumbling building, which might once have been a cottage of goodly size, a water wheel on one side. As the water was still-in-place, so was the wheel, the water meant to be flowing over it clear, and bubbly-though solid, like candy sugar glace. The upper floor (or floors) of the cottage were not visible, shrouded and taken over, run through by the vines, but here the lowest was clear of them, the walls that had once stood gone, fallen or rotten from either the passage of time or the effect the blue light had upon them. Only the stone footer outline of the cottage and corner supports remain, strengthened, one supposed, by the bushes and vines entwining them.

In this way, one could see clear through the cottage's ground floor, within which only a heavy rectangular table remained, the rest of the small clearing and then an identical wall of thorn bushes to the opposite side.

Upon the table lay the thing the light was either coming from or going into.

A body.

Quick as you like, he felt something touch his shoulder, a hand come to rest upon it. He turned without speaking, assuming the touch was Mulan's.

It was not. The warrior was several paces behind him, still at doing her job guarding their rear.

"There!" he heard himself hiss, hoping to get the attention of the others. He sighted a figure darting beyond him among the thorns. But even as he saw it he knew it made no sense. There was no room for anyone to move-much less navigate-outside of the path Philip had cut for them.

His hiss had been too quiet to rouse the others' alarm, and though the encounter put a sweat upon his brow, events soon transpired to hold his attention and distract him from the odd, impossible event.

_Magic was all around_, he reminded himself. _Anything might happen_.

"Philip!" Aurora gasped, and for a moment Neal thought she might lose her legs out from under her, but before the Prince could answer, she was little more than a streak heading further into the blue and to the side of the table, and the person upon it.

"How can this be?" she asked, the first in a flurry of questions. "How long has she been here? Is she injured? A curse, certainly, but of whose making? Can we wake her from it? Have you tried? Will she…is she…do you think she is otherwise well? Oh! Oh! Oh!" Tears began to stream wildly down her cheeks, the expression on her face overwhelmed, but far from sad.

Philip himself rushed to answer her as completely as he could. "I do not know how it can be, nor why. How long? It is impossible to know without being able to ask her. A curse? So it would seem, but as you say: why? And whose? Have I tried to rouse her? Yes. In every way I can think of. My attempts have done little other than to irritate the vines."

"And you," Neal heard himself asking Mulan from where he still kept a safe distance away, "you did your share of trying?"

"It is Aurora's turn, now," she replied, not taking her eyes off their only exit from the clearing. "If Philip and I are right we will not have long to wait for the answers to all of her questions."

"Be on watch," he told her levelly but none too loudly. "I thought I felt something. Saw movement within the bushes."

"Felt what?" she asked, though her tone showed she did not discount what he had seen, only wished to have more information.

"A hand, a touch on my shoulder," he answered, telling only half the truth. It had been a touch on his shoulder, certainly, anyone would identify that sensation just so.

But that other, unique sensation: the first finger of that hand which rested in the place where shoulder meets neck: that finger sliding up the side of the neck, an absentminded caress to it. A familiar touch.

What he did not say was that it felt (everything about it felt) like the hand of his mother.

**...TBC...**


	4. Chapter 4

Aurora did not give in to merely crying—nor to going on asking questions. In short order she took action, grabbing the person laid out upon the table's hand in hers, rubbing her cheek against the back of its palm. As she did so, it became more difficult for the others to see the little drama playing out within what had once been a house. The blue light wore on Neal's eyes as he squinted to try and keep track of what was taking place.

For starters, he could tell nothing about the body that had so affected Aurora. It was but a shadow to him; in moments the blue light behind it, then in others, it was _only_ blue light, with no shadow to speak of. In those moments he could only keep his eyes on Rose, her outline shadowed even as her face was magically illumined in the clearing's glow.

Whatever it was that had convinced him there had been a hand on his shoulder, seem to have fled the clearing, was no longer dancing about in the fluctuating blue light.

"A kiss can break any curse," he heard himself say, though he wished he hadn't. After all, he was far from convinced that this curse (whatever it was, however it may have come to be) ought to be broken. _Who of them could say with certainty why it had been cast? What (or who) it had been meant to stop, to put to sleep? _Perhaps, more wisely, they ought to quietly back out of this clearing, down Philip's path, let the brambles grow it over, and enter into a pact never to come back here as long as they lived. _That_ would sound better to him.

But clearly it would not sound so to Aurora. Her chin jerked in his direction at the sound of his voice, as though he had recalled her to herself. Her eyes shot toward him, and even over the distance and in the overwhelming light he could see memory and connection take place within them.

"It broke_ mine_," all heard her say before she leaned over and kissed the body's cheek.

Within an instant, though the blue glow did not diminish it somehow modulated, and it became more apparent that it was coming from the person on the table—that that person was swathed in it like a sleeper in a blanket or a bather in water. The head and arm of that figure began to move, slowly, as though waking from a long, deep sleep.

He thought he might jump out of his skin waiting, waiting for what would come next. Would the thorns turn as one, and strike? Would they pull back? Or die, revealing the sky beyond them? Revealing whatever of the sun's light that was left in the day?

_Had it been day when they had entered Philip's trail?_ He could hardly recall. It seemed months ago, this clearing and its unnatural stillness slowing time even for the non-sleepers.

It was Mulan, who had perhaps never been drowsy or lethargic an hour in her life, who spoke. "Water," she said, noting the sound of the stream again running (though sluggish yet) in its bed, the creak of the old wooden waterwheel now turning on its axis.

"Oh, Auntie! Auntie!" Aurora called, and for the first time Neal could tell the body rising from the table was that of a woman's, though the blue light kept him from being able to discern much more about her.

He looked back to Mulan for some explanation.

"Aurora's auntie, Philip says," she filled him in, "under a sleeping curse among the ruin of their forest cottage."

_Another Sleeping Curse_. He thought of Snow. Tried not to think of Henry, of Magic used upon a child of his. "…Like Aurora?" he asked.

Mulan did not exactly shrug at his logical leap, but her shoulders moved in such a way to indicate, 'so it would seem'.

But before he could continue to remark on the oddity of yet another Sleeper being discovered—much less one related to Rose, a new danger appeared, and the enchanted sword Philip had handed back to him proved no match for it. He was neither quick enough nor keen-eyed enough to notice the black-upon-black of a bud not yet blooming on a vine curling near Mulan before it opened quite suddenly into full bloom, spraying something like pollen upon the upper breastplate of the warrior's armor.

Even Mulan was caught off-guard, her own blade slicing the flower and separating it from its branch, but too late. As it fell to the dark ground it immediately wilted, and with its wilting turned a vibrant, glowing reddish orange—as did the substance it had sprayed upon her. It was now easy to see this was making quick work of burning through her armor like the strongest acid, and in shortest order, reaching the skin over her heart, where, as she fell to the ground even Philip (who was some paces ahead, closer to Aurora and the wakened Sleeper) could see a Magical burn begin to appear on her flesh in reaction to the poison spray.

Neal could not have said if Mulan cried out, if she had a soldier's swear ready for both the pain of her injury and her (and his) incompetence in preventing it. For a moment all he could see was that very particular-looking scald injury upon the skin covering her heart.

And his mind betrayed him, and it was no longer Ninja Mei-mei's face above that wound, but his father's.

* * *

The deck of a ship, a helm he had never thought to be at again in his life. Steering for a place he had only ever wanted to go because it was the only place he knew for certain would one day call to Emma Swan: Storybrooke, Maine. And even then, the name of a town he had often enough wondered about, and knew now only from the back of a postcard.

"You shouldn't be able to sail this ship with only a crew of _three_, should you?" Emma asked, skeptically, less a question than her confirming that something was fishy.

"Naw," he admitted, sheepish as if caught shoplifting. "Ship like this? Takes a crew of more'n twenty, I reckon."

"Hook have that many?" she asked, but again, it was less a question than simple fact-establishing.

"Maybe," he shrugged it off. "Once, a long time ago."

"But not to get to New York," she went on, more detective than she knew.

"Not unless he gave 'em shoreleave," he speculated. "For the sake of Port Authority better hope not."

"Hmmuph," she thought. "So a single man pilots this ship to a city we presume he's _never_ before been to…in a world…?"

"He _may well_ have been to…" he interjected, matching her slow pace and tone of discovery.

They shared a significant glance. It seemed like those were happening a lot since she'd run him down, especially when his father and Henry were within earshot.

She went on. "And now _you're_ sailing it to a magical village in Maine you've...?"

"Never been to before," he agreed with a shake of his head.

"My head hurts," she said. "At least on the flight down there were cocktails."

"Bloody MaryJane?" he asked with a knowing grin, referencing one of their favorite post-toke memories from back in the day.

She frowned at him, scanning the deck to see where Henry might be.

"Don't be an ass," she said.

He let his own eyes slide to the side to meet hers, knowing her frown was exaggerated, pretty sure she wanted to smile at the shared memory, too. "Why's he wearing that old rag?" he asked her in an abrupt about-face, not meaning Henry.

She didn't have to confirm who the 'he' he was asking about was.

"He enchanted it back in Storybrooke," she told him. "Says it holds his memories. Without it he would forget who he was, he would just become his Cursed identity: Mr. Gold, pawnbroker and town-well," she considered. "He seems to own the town. The buildings, at least."

With a shallow scoff he asked, "D'you know what it is?"

"No idea."

"It's a shawl he wove for me on my twelfth birthday. He wove the cloth, my mom made it into a shawl."

"No," she went for her instinct: to disbelieve. "How did he…" she shook her head. "Never mind."

They sailed in silence a moment, watching Henry as he moved around the ship's deck, out of earshot.

Emma was the first to speak again. "Mary-Margaret says he has the mobile that hung over her daughter's—my…_My_ crib in the Enchanted Forest hanging up in his shop. And he gave me David's sword to use," she watched his face for his reaction as she told him. "Can you believe that?"

"To _use_?" his laugh was not meant to be nervous. Perhaps he was the only one to sense the paranoia in its tone. "Whaddaya need a sword for?"

Her eyes rose up to meet her brows. "Asks the man piloting the _Jolly Roger_."

He cracked another grin at this, letting his face relax from the stern cast it tended to take on when discussing his father. "Know any Gilbert and Sullivan?" he asked, good-naturedly, certain a withering look was all he would get from her in response. Her standard reply when he threw out a joke or a reference she didn't follow.

"Do me a favor?" he asked, his right eyebrow going up, after long years of practice knowing it was best to ask for the favor before laying out the particulars.

"Sure," she agreed, but looked wary, drawing out the word as she spoke it.

"In my duffel—there's a hand-woven white scarf," she gave him a look like, 'okay, Granny—it's not _that_ cold out here on the water.'

He ignored the look. "More of a shawl, a hand-woven Butanese _khatak._ Take that down to him. Give it to him. He'll like that. Maybe take his mind off some of the pain."

Emma gave a snort. "I don't think he'll like it better than his lost son's rotten shirt that he's been carrying around for I-don't-know-how-many years like it was made of gold."

"Ach," he dismissed her statement. "Gold doesn't mean anything to him," he reminded her that The Dark One could conjure the precious metal at the drop of a hat. "Besides, he doesn't need that now. We're here."

"Here?" she asked, as they sailed through the edge of a fogbank, and the docks and cannery of Storybrooke was revealed, quite suddenly, on the other side.

He wondered if it seemed sudden to her, their arrival. It did to him. He might have found his sea legs as he stood at Hook's ship's helm easily enough, but he was still feeling very out-of-practice dealing with Emma, and more so with his father.

"Maybe I _should have_ taken it away from him," she second-guessed herself for letting Gold keep his talisman. "What use would this dagger be, then? To control Mr. Gold? Make him hold a fire sale?"

"Maybe you should have," Neal agreed to agree without conviction, no stranger to second-guessing.

"He wouldn't remember _you_," she reminded him, as though this would sway his thought on the matter.

"He wouldn't remember Magic," he reminded her.

"We might—we _will_—need his magic. On our side."

Neal shook his head, his brow furrowed. "You talk about him like you know he's a weapon, Emma. Like he's Fat Man _and_ Little Boy, or whatever. It's like you don't realize he's a weapon you—none of you—have the power to use. And not get used _by_."

She didn't like this. She let a touch of impatience show through. "Then why didn't you take it away from him? Maroon him forever as Mr. Gold in the city?"

"Because I'm an idiot," he told her, again without conviction. "I'm the coward that still remembers that this world is where we were supposed to find our happy ending, him and me. The World Without Magic. And yet, when he gets here, when we're finally together—I just…wanna to get away from him. Away from the part of me that still remembers the part of him that was once a good man. The part of him that loved me." He knew the smile now on his face was more about muscles around his eyes trying not to drop a tear (assuming any might still form at the memory). "Loved me more than anything."

"But _not_ anymore?" she pushed, her eyes narrowing as he knew she was trying to use her self-professed super power. "You can't see that in him anymore?"

He exhaled, trying to think of how to explain the way he was presently feeling about the man belowdecks. "My story in that book of Henry's?"

"Some of it, yeah," she nodded, uncertain about this turn in conversation.

"Baelfire," he used his own name in the third person, "is history, Emma. His father is history. There a story in a book. Here? Now?" He took a hand off of the wheel and threw it out in illustration. "There's only The Dark One. There's only Neal."

At the noise of someone coming up on deck from the hold, he and Emma both turned. His Poppa's injury had left him unsteady on his feet, and the climb was no small accomplishment in his condition. He appeared frail, exhausted, powerless.

"Sorry," Emma said under her breath so that only Neal might hear, "I'll go get that for him now," she referenced the shawl he had asked her to grab.

"Nevermind," he told her. "Probably a bad idea anyway," he shrugged, belittling what had been his original intent. "Was nothing. Just an old piece of cloth. He could magick up one better for himself with half-a-thought."

He knew she didn't think he saw her, thought he was fully concentrating on where to drop anchor, but he did catch the expression that passed over her face at this; sadness, longing, and something of deep-as-bone understanding.

If anyone knew what it was like to throw up new and higher defenses, Emma Swan was your girl.

* * *

Mulan fell to the ground on one knee, hand to her chest where the flower's poison still glowed bright. Brightly enough to illuminate her face in the darkness. She was gasping, like it had taken the breath out of her, though the spray could not have been more than a few scant ounces of liquid.

"You got…something else up your sleeve…on the line of that fairy's foot?" she asked him, fighting through breathlessness, inquiring about his previously demonstrated knowledge of the forest's healing plants.

"I-uh," his mind refused to be helpful, even as he crouched down to better see her, still holding a sword in each hand.

"Here! Mulan!" Philip rushed toward them, taking _his_ sword out of Neal's left hand, holding up the blade and waving it side-to-side over the wound as if the enchantment it retained might make a difference there.

It did not.

Mulan continued to struggle.

"Fairy's foot my foot, mmph," they all three heard a voice say, and turned to see the blue light nearer to them, and within it, Aurora, who went to her knees next to her friend.

"Oh, help her, Auntie, help her if you can," she begged the figure within the light.

A woman's hand coalesced (or seemed to do so) out of the light, and passed gently over the bared space on Mulan's chest. Instantly, the warrior's breathing returned to normal, the stress of pain left her face. "Now you sit still, Girl," she told Mulan. "And rest. Let that have a moment to do its full work."

"You are not entirely yourself, Merryweather," Philip said to the lady in the light, "but I thank you as a friend, nonetheless."

"Oh, yes, Auntie," Aurora agreed, "_thank_ you." When she turned back to the lady, gratitude shared space reflected in her eyes with the bluish light.

"You are welcome, children," the lady said. "Those flowers were Flora's handiwork, as I recall."

"Flora? Auntie Flora cursed you and imprisoned you here?"

"Oh," the voice within the blue said, "It is a long story, Rose. But it will take a moment for my self—and my eyesight-to return to what they once were, so I shall tell it to you now, if you like."

**...TBC...**


	5. Chapter 5

"You were sleeping, Dearest. Maleficent vanquished. Flora, Fauna, and I hardly knew what to do with ourselves. _Your_ Curse, after all, could only be lifted by true love's kiss—by Philip, and he had disappeared without a trace. Flora and Fauna agreed to search for him, and so I agreed to stay behind. So that I might live to see the day you were awakened, and thereby fulfill the promise made to the King at your birth—to watch over you all the days of your life." Though the woman's face could still not be seen, those who listened could tell the voice was smiling.

"It seemed to make the most sense to put me to sleep as well, leave me somewhere you might think of looking for me. But I didn't want to be bothered in the meantime, so we added a few of our own things to the briars that tend to grow up during a long Sleeping Curse."

"Booby traps," Neal prompted.

"Yes, that's right," the voice sounded pleased. "Flora cooked up some fun booby traps. Though Fauna and I had to talk her out of making them pink. Too obvious, you know. So, how long have we been asleep, then? Did you find me right away?" No one could see her face to know that she squinted. "My eyesight is coming back slowly, but tell me—how looks the cottage?"

"Oh, Auntie," Rose replied to her. "It has been a very long time."

"But Philip found you?" Merryweather tried to confirm. "He woke you?"

"Yes."

"Then Maleficent's evil has been undone for good," the fairy responded, satisfied.

"Maleficent is no longer resident of these lands," Mulan added.

"She has gone?" the blue light asked, lightly, conversationally.

"To another world," Philip answered her.

"Another _world_? How can that be? There _are_ no more magic beans. Surely not even a realm jumper would be foolish enough-"

"A Curse, Merryweather," Philip spoke on. "The Enchanted Forest cursed. Only the smallest portion of it escaped."

"A Curse? I had heard rumors of such a Curse existing. Rumors that it had fallen into Maleficent's hands."

"She did not cast the Curse," Aurora corrected her. "It was Regina, known as the Evil Queen, intent upon revenge against Snow White and her Prince."

During this exchange of information Neal had put out his hand to help Aurora up from where she had been next to the kneeling, recuperating Mulan. Aurora had taken it, with a smile for him. Nearly standing, she still held it.

The blue light, which had begun over the last minutes to both concentrate and diminish, abruptly flared. "My vision returns to me," Merryweather announced. "_Very_ clearly to me. Step away from that man, Rose," she commanded, and Neal felt Aurora freeze, her hand grow cold, her grip on his unsteady, confused.

"And you," the figure within the light commanded him, "make no sudden movements. "

The flare ended, and for the first time he very clearly saw a hand pull downward through the air producing a wand out of nothing, and a face; a person was suddenly visible. The face looking back at him, its eyebrows perched high in alarm, caused him for a moment to gulp air.

"You," he said to the fairy, forgetting Rose and Philip, forgetting Mulan still on the ground. His mouth went dry. "How can _you_ be here?" But his curiosity was backed by something more frantic than mere interest in geographical trivia. "How can _you_…Be. _Here_?"

Behind the back of the house, the briars began to rustle as though someone were approaching them, where they clustered around the blue light. Philip thought he heard a footfall. Mulan imagined she picked up the sound of someone's cloak tearing as they tried to push their way through the brambles.

"Enough!" the fairy shouted toward the noise, which stopped. But she still did not answer his question. "No one here owes you an explanation of anything," she informed him, "only child of the Dark One." She did not say the title of his poppa's curse like most: there was neither reverence nor dread in her voice. "Do _they_ know it is your father's Curse they speak of that raped these lands?" she asked. "Do _they_ know that you abandoned Snow White's daughter to imprisonment? Your query would be far better directed at yourself: how did _you_ come to be _here_?"

The heroic trio did not immediately respond or react to Merryweather's knowledge of who he was. There was a pause as they remained stunned—not dissimilar to if she had made use of one of her spells.

Then, "This is true?" Philip demanded, turning toward him, flourishing his sword more out of habit than true aggression. "Your father…is The Dark One?" He looked crushed. Looked like if Neal lied to him and denied it he'd rather believe the lie than its opposite.

"No, Philip," Merryweather counseled the knight. "Your sword will not work. The boy Baelfire bears a strong enchantment of protection: none can spill his blood as long as he is in this Land."

"Your name isn't Neal? It's…_Baelfire_?" Aurora asked from where she still held his hand—rather from where he tried, with only insistent pressure, to keep her hand in his, as though losing touch with her would lose her and her good opinion to him entirely and forever. The look on her face was one of pure pain.

"Honorable Fairy," Mulan spoke, as always the last and most well-reasoned of the three. "What magic has this man? Other than this spell that preserves his life from harm while in this Land? I have seen him break his back attempting simple tasks. Am I to learn he did this when all the while he could have _conjured_ his fire? _Cooked_ his breakfast? In a word: is he a dark wizard?"

Aurora leapt in before the fairy could answer. "You _cannot_ be right, Auntie. How can you be right? The Dark One? You say he was human once? Human enough to have _children_?"

"Stand aside, Rose. The bower is already prepared," Merryweather referenced the briars. "The table now bare. We will leave him here, unable to trouble us if he sleeps. Unable to bring further harm to this world. We shall see if _he_ has a lover true, and if she can find him to wake. Until then he will be no further concern of ours."

He thought he felt the air begin to constrict at her plans for him. At the same time heard a gasp and a light whine, a crooning in the distance—but it had not come from the trio, nor from him. Perhaps it was only an odd gust of wind. He had no time to pay it closer attention.

Neal heard Mulan more than saw her as she drew herself up off the ground, heard her sword slide back into her grip, a groan as the weight of it in her hand pulled on the newly-repaired skin over her heart. She took up a defensive position in front of him and Aurora, facing off with the blue light.

"Again, Honorable Fairy, I must ask for an answer: _is_ this man a wizard? Does he carry Magic either dark or light?"

He had almost found his voice, almost was ready to speak, when Aurora abruptly stopped pulling away from his hand and instead held to it. "Auntie," she said, pleading in her voice. "You are confused. Neal—Neal isn't _from_ our world. He was sent here, away from his family. He has been _nothing_ but a help to us. You _must_ understand."

"Aurora," Philip said, from where he stood, still equidistant from the fairy and the other three: yet to take a side. His mind was not made up about guilt or innocence, but he was close enough to have seen Neal's bare-faced reactions among the hubbub of Merryweather's allegations.

Understanding Philip's hesitance, Aurora turned away from facing the fairy, and looked up at Neal.

"You're new to this land," she told him as though reminding him. "You come from Henry's world." She smiled her helpful smile and shook her head. "A world without Magic."

He felt his shoulders half-collapse, his face fall in. How he wished he could tell her this was true. How he wished it could be true. He didn't want his father's legacy.

Maybe he knew this day had been coming. Maybe, silently, he had been counting the moments to it in his mind since he had waked on these shores. But how could he have many any different choices? Had they known him for who and what he truly was they would have had nothing to do with him.

And he would never have known the friendship and respect of a man like Philip, the companionship (terse though it might be) of Mulan, or the affection of a girl like Aurora—the faith she had always had in him. The encouraging sunniness of her temperament.

Predicated on a faith he was about to shatter.

"Where were you born?" the fairy prompted him, as though she knew he would now answer her questions truthfully. "And to whom?"

"I was born Baelfire," he admitted, not taking his eyes off Aurora (though it would have hurt less, perhaps, to close them and not see the effect his confession had on her). His eyes searching every corner of her face for a chance—however small-that she could accept what he was being made to share. "To a mortal man and his wife of these lands, in a place that was then known as the Frontlands."

"I have heard of that kingdom. Long ago it was ruled by a Duke…" Philip said disbelievingly, reciting an old history lesson learned, his brow furrowed at the impossibility of a man from the World without Magic having even heard of such a place. The impossibility of a Frontlander still being alive in the present moment.

"_Bael_fire?" Aurora asked, as though trying to find some peace with his given name.

His shoulders raised only slightly, as if in a shrug of assent. "Later, my father took on the Curse of the Dark One. It's true. It's _true_, Rose. But I have no magic of my own," he vowed with a strong shake of his head. "Nor do I want any."

Aurora watched him, her eyes quick, examining his face after every statement he made, searching for veracity, clearly in a turmoil. Should she believe her auntie? Should she side with the man she had known for only a few weeks after he fell through a portal into her world and into her life? Did she follow her heart, or do as she was told? Could she believe him? Could she reconcile herself to his dangerous and unfortunate connections to dark magic? Or should she cast him out, agree to cursing him as Merryweather wished?

It was only Mulan who asked no questions, her dark eyes not straying from the fairy's blue light, her stance still one suited to impending battle.

He was like a man grasping at anything, thinking he'd found a lifeline only to have it unravel. His tongue couldn't explain himself fast enough. "I left these lands when I was fourteen, and haven't seen them since. _That's_ the story of the son of The Dark One. Until a month ago I hadn't seen my father: fourteen years old until now," he declared, hoping that distance of time might appeal to them, might sway them in his favor.

"I'm sorry you have to learn it this way," he addressed himself only to Rose. She was the only one still looking at him besides the fairy. His face begged for her acceptance of him. "It's not what I wanted."

But it was Mulan who replied, though she had made no eye contact nor movement to look at him. "I have watched this man closely since he arrived here. Followed his every action, weighed his every footfall. I have long known there was more to him than he was sharing. But I have also discerned that he has no desire to bring us or this land harm. He has behaved with nothing but honor toward all of us since his arrival. The desire for self-preservation in withholding unfortunate family connections is not a crime. And it is certainly not punishable by curse."

His mind leapt to Henry, the son he had hardly let himself think of even seeing again. And yet, he must have, for this idea of being Cursed to sleep chilled him to the bone. More so than simply his usual dread of Magic. A man cursed to remain asleep and insensate was a man who could not even try to cheer himself with the notion (however distant) that he might be able to search for a way back to his family. "Before you do whatever you're gonna do," he said, "How you can be here? Where'd all your ink go to?"

"My 'ink'?" the fairy asked, her corporeal figure now fully visible (and of a height similar to Mulan's), the blue light illuminating but not blinding.

"How she can be here?" Philip replied rhetorically. "She just told us. She's been under a sleeping curse."

"No she hasn't," Neal disagreed, strongly shaking his head. "She's been in the other world. The World without Magic," he declared, his voice raising. "Tell them _that,_ fairy. Confess. _You_'_ve_ found a way out of here."

**...TBC...**


End file.
